OTTAWA — Ashkan Zandi was just in his mid 20s back in 1990, but by many measures already had it made: he had a successful career, a BMW parked out front and satellite TV inside.

“I had the material things,” he recalls, “but I wasn’t happy.

“I didn’t have my freedom.”

Indeed, many customers who visited him in his watch repair shop in Tehran repeatedly asked him why he stayed. “They kept telling me, ‘Why are you here? They need you in Canada and the United States.’”

Others, however, offered opposing advice: “Why leave everything you have only to start again with nothing?” they asked.

The decision to leave Iran was not an easy one to make, but as he settles into his third location in Ottawa, after fire and decay forced him from the previous two, Zandi’s resolve appears to have well withstood the repeated gales of misfortune that he’s faced.

“I think God had a plan for me,” he says.

***

Watchmaking was not an uncommon trade on paternal side of his family, and so it was no surprise when Ashkan displayed great manual dexterity, even as a youngster. At 10, he built an air conditioner for a Grade 5 project. He studied electronics in high school, where his teachers told him he’d go far.

With siblings attending university to become lawyers, however, he halted his studies after high school to find work. With his knowledge of electronics, he could easily repair broken VCRs, radios and tape recorders, but didn’t find that work particularly challenging. When one of his brothers returned from studying watch repair with an uncle, Zandi discovered that that was what he wanted to do, too.

“I was amazed by the watches,” he recalls. “They are so small and tricky.”

His father knew a watchmaker who was not only one of the best in the country, but also willing to turn a blind eye to the fact that Ashkan hadn’t yet completed his mandatory military service. If caught working, Zandi would face imprisonment, while the shop owner could lose his business.

Despite this, Zandi showed up every day to the third floor of the Aluminum Building — so known for its facade — in downtown Tehran, where he apprenticed under a master horologist.

“Other students wouldn’t want to work on the difficult or expensive watches,” he recalls, “because if they broke it they’d have to pay for it. So I always did those ones, and I learned very fast.”

He eventually started his own business, first with his brother in a back corner of his father’s gift shop, and then later on his own, but with the backing of a brother-in-law unable to practise law following the Iranian revolution.

His apprenticeship with a master proved fruitful, and business was good. He got a nice car and a satellite dish, only to discover that they didn’t make him happy.

“I heard a lot of good things about Canada, and the most important thing was the freedom,” he recalls. “When you are free, it is different.

“I knew in my heart I had to go.”

***

He tried to enter Canada illegally, and when that failed, went to the Philippines instead, where he continued to repair watches for seven years. He met Desiree Alcopra, who worked in the Philippines for Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. The two married, and in 2002 moved to Ottawa.

Here, he took courses to improve the English he’d learned while in Iran, and soon found work repairing watches at The Bay department store in Bayshore. He left there to work for a watchmaker downtown, but when that faltered in 2003, he opened his own business, Time Sharpening, on Kent Street, behind the bus terminal.

That only lasted a few months, as the building they were in was deemed unsafe, and was torn down. Ashkan and his wife lost the more than $10,000 they put into fixing the place up.

One customer, however, a jeweller who was retiring, offered them his shop on Beechwood. The move was a success, with Ashkan describing his customers as more like a family than clients.

“People would come in just to chat or show me a watch they’d bought,” he says. “Their kids would come in to get a candy from the dish on the counter.”

He loved the location and the work. “It’s an art. When I repair something, I feel I’m giving life to something. Sometimes I get more happy than the owner.

“The good side,” he adds, “is that I fix it, I enjoy it, AND they pay me to do it.”

Regarding the latter, he says he keeps his rate low so that customers will be happy when they pay him for work he’s done. “That brings me good luck and happiness,” he says. “When people pay with their whole heart and feel you deserve it, that money is really good.”

And while we live in an increasingly disposable society, Zandi says that people continue to have their watches repaired, rather than toss them in favour of new ones.

“When you get attached to something, you’d rather fix it than get a new one. It’s been with you through good and bad. It’s like a friend.”

His buoyant attitude helped when Time Sharpening was destroyed last March by a fire that began in the basement of the Home Hardware next door. Zandi was woefully under-insured, and again found himself facing the prospect of starting over from scratch. He found a new location in a mall not far away, on St. Laurent Boulevard, and reopened last June.

And by and large, his family of customers have been finding their way over to his new shop.

“I often don’t want to leave,” he says. “Other people can’t wait to get out of work at the end of the day, but I get going on a watch and just want to stay until it’s done.

“This is my second home,” he adds. “I’m fascinated by watches. It’s a kind of addiction. It can’t be separated from me, and thank God, I’m happy, because I love watches.”

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